Sibelius, Rautavaara and Adès. The Hallé. Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham. 26 November 2024, 5✩✩✩✩✩. Review: William Ruff.

Photo credit: Emma Wernig

Sibelius, Rautavaara and Adès. The Hallé. Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham. 26 November 2024,

5✩✩✩✩✩. Review: William Ruff.

“An artistically unified, unusually satisfying programme.”

Just the planning (let alone the playing) of this Hallé concert is worth a cheer (even a standing ovation).  In an era when concerts have erred on the side of caution, it can only be good news that risk-taking has returned.  Here was a concert with a sharp artistic focus, as clear as the water in a Nordic mountain lake. 

They started with Sibelius’ 7th (and final) Symphony, a work written when the Finnish composer’s chronic depression and alcoholism made life difficult for him and for everyone close to him.  It’s in just one, vast movement, the result of seven years of painful labour.  The symphony evolves organically so you would be hard pressed to say where one section ends and another begins - except that there is a majestic theme for trombones which evokes a world as old as time itself and whose reappearance throughout the symphony helps to give it such structural strength.  It is not easy music to describe in words: you have to engage with it.  Tuesday’s audience was lucky to have in the Hallé and Thomas Adès musicians whose commitment and insight were translated into a performance of overwhelming force.

The Hallé was joined by violinist Stephen Waarts to play Deux Sérénades by Einojuhani Rautavaara, a major figure in Finnish music and a protegé of Sibelius.  Subtitled ‘To My Love’ and ‘To Life’, these serenades are delicate, poignant pieces, sounding modern, old and timeless all at once.  Through Stephen Waarts’ sensitive playing they evoked a world of calm and wonder, often sad but never indulging in self-pity. 

Waarts rejoined the orchestra at the beginning of the concert’s second half to play Thomas Adès’ own Air, Homage to Sibelius, a haunting work with a highly unusual sound palette.  High strings, high tuned percussion and harp provide a cool landscape above which the (again high) violin part floats, repeating its melody hypnotically.  As well as being beautiful in itself, there could hardly have been a better way to link and illuminate the sound-worlds of the two Finnish composers.

This sound is inevitably inspired by Nature, especially the severity and grandeur of Finland’s great pine forests.  In his 5th Symphony (which ended the concert) Sibelius was inspired by seeing a flock of 16 swans to write the ‘Swan Hymn’, the finale’s wonderfully majestic theme, conjuring up pictures of the swans’ huge wings slowly beating.  The Hallé’s horns played this magnificently.  However, Sibelius makes huge demands on each section of the orchestra – as well as the conductor, who has to ensure that the various fragments which Sibelius fashions are crafted into a coherent whole.  There is nothing in music quite like Sibelius’ sound world.  Here is Finland’s landscape in a musical nutshell: open-air, looking into the far distance.  The effect depends on each colour being the right shade and placed precisely on the musical canvas.  Thomas Adès’ was crystal-clear in his direction, sensitive to detail without ever losing sight of the symphony’s powerful sense of purpose.  The final six hammer blows brought to an end an artistically unified, unusually satisfying programme.

The Hallé,  Thomas Adès (conductor), Stephen Waarts (violin).